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Silly Silly Surveys - Hilton Hotels plays 20 million questions
I recently stayed at a Hilton Hotel. The stay was very nice with no major complaints (larger selection of cable channels would be nice). Service and people were very professional. And then I get this email asking for a feedback from my experience:
Dear Isaac Bowman,
We were delighted to serve you during your recent stay at Hilton. We realize that you have a choice in hotel properties, and we appreciate your business.
As a valued HHonors member, your feedback is important to us. We invite you to take a few minutes to complete a survey about your stay at Hilton Houston/Westchase, where you checked out on October 12, 2006.
To view the survey, please click on the web address below. If that does not work, please copy and paste the entire web address into the address field of your browser.
http://hilton.medallia.com/H
.pl?b=3&ID=1x9s4R7j2E8g5g2d &lang=eng Your comments are very valuable to us, and we look forward to hearing about your stay with us.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Diskin
Senior Vice President - Brand Management
Hilton Hotels
So I decided to respond with my mostly positive thoughts. After all I enjoyed my visit. After something like 10 minutes of questioning I am only HALF WAY DONE! Really what idiot would think that they will get ANY kind of valuable comments or data from a survey that is 20 pages long!
The section on GUEST ROOM was 3 (three) pages long! Here are the 19 questions just for the ROOM:
- Décor/furnishings of guest room
- Cleanliness of guest room
- Comfort of bed (mattress, cover, linens, pillows)
- Condition of carpet
- Guest room lighting
- Quietness of guest room (outside noise/hall noise)
- Heating/cooling/ventilation system worked properly
- Room smelled fresh/clean
- Working order of TV, remote, phone, clock radio, etc.
- Ease of High Speed Internet access
- Quality of High Speed Internet connection
- Bath/shower drainage
- Bath/shower water pressure
- Ventilation
- Cleanliness of bathroom
- Bathroom lighting
- Quality of bathroom amenities (soap, shampoo, etc.)
- Working order of bathroom
- Condition of bathroom
Who would ask me about Ventilation (question #14) or the condition of the Carpet (question # 4)??? If I tought the room was Dirty (question #2) then most of the other questions are going to be clicked just because I was ticked off about the dirty room. My room was perfectly clean by the way.
Hasn't anyone ever heard of drop down menus? If I think the room was 'dirty' then select a reason below, would be a much better option for a survey.
Below is my letter to back to Hilton:
Jeffrey Diskin
Senior Vice President - Brand Management
Hilton Hotels
I just received an email from your department asking if I would respond to an online survey because, "Your comments are very valuable to us."
I realize that this type of feedback can be extremely valuable so I went ahead and clicked on the link and proceeded to complete the survey. After spending almost 10 minutes and reading/clicking on over 10 pages of questions and look up and come to the painful notice that I am only HALF way done!
I am not quite sure Mr. Diskin what value your time is to you, but I can assure you that the value I bring to you as a customer wanes significantly after 10 minutes of questioning. Please be aware that it is not the survey itself that annoys me so greatly. It is the fact that a company with a department overseeing brand management allows it to happen. It brings to mind that if a business can be so oblivious that their survey generates more frustration than feedback, then what other aspects are also overlooked.
Here is my feedback to your department:
- Limit the survey to 1 page with 10-15 questions
- Don’t ask me 10 questions on the SAME THING – If I did not like even one thing about the ‘bathrooms’ then ALL of my responses will be the same (negative) on the same item and therefore repeated questioning won’t result in benefits
- Ask “Was the room clean” if NO then ask for comments or a drop-down box
Thank you,
Isaac Bowman
Manager of Technical Sales
American Express Business Travel
1-877-xxx-xxxx
www.isaacbowman.com
Comments
survey
I was Googling Jeffrey Diskin in order to find his address so I could write him a similar letter to yours. Although my major complaint is about the renovations and subsequent hammering that occurred for 7 hours on a Saturday (and holiday!) when I stayed, the survey is up there with my annoyances. Is there any chance you have a reliable address for him? I would greatly appreciate it!
Addy
If you get his addy let me know I will write him too. No Idea how anyone could devise a survey that has this many questions.
Hilton
I had a terrible stay in the Croydon Hilton a month or so ago. I wrote them a letter (though their website) to complain and they refunded my money, which was nice, but did little to make me want to stay there again. To get this survey sent to me today is a real slap in the face! Advice - if you have a bad stay, join the tripadvisor.com website and post your review. Its results tend to come up first in a google search (try it for croydon hilton) and so your bad review will be the first thing people see when they search for a place to stay. Be warned Hilton!
Stupid stupid surveys!
Like Jessica above, I came across your blog when googling Jeffrey Diskin's name to see if I could find an email address for him.
I got the same survey after a stay at the Nassau Hilton last week. I normally don't fill these surveys in because of the time they take, but as I had had a few problems during my stay, decided to fill this one in to get my complaints off my chest.
Like you, after 10 minutes I find I am only halfway through (even though at the start of the survey there is a note that says it will take only 7-10 minutes). So I am getting a bit ticked off about how long it is taking - but then I get to the page which is titled:
"Prior to your stay at our hotel, when did you most recently stay at a hotel?
Below that it asks you to indicate where that hotel was and gives you six choices:
USA
CANADA
MEXICO
OTHER
DON'T REMEMBER
PREFER NOT TO SAY
As the last hotel I stayed at was in Malaysia, I clicked the 'OTHER' button and then a drop down menu that listed other countries. However, the only countries listed were North American and Caribbean countries. So because Malaysia was not listed in the drop-down menu, I tried clicking on the 'NEXT' button to carry on with the survey - but it kept returning to the same page. It appeared that because I had not selected a country, I could not complete the survey. (I tested that by clicking on 'Jamaica' and that let me advance - but of course that was no good to me because I had not been to Jamaica or any of the other countries on the list).
So not only had I wasted 10 minutes on their stupid survey, the survey template itself was badly designed - so I couldn't complete it, making it a doubly stupid survey.
I wanted to write to Jeffrey Diskin to complain about him wasting my time, but as I couldn't find his email address, I thought I would add my gripe to your blog here and hope that one day the guy googles his own name and reads this and realises how much he is annoying his customers.
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